The Different Dimensions of Hate Speech

Hate speech can be understood as a certain kind of illocutionary act. Of course it is harmful in terms of its effects but it's also harmful in itself. Cheel Austin the philosopher of language wrote a book called How to Do Things with Words. We use words that have certain meanings and he called the action we perform when we use meaningful words the low cuchenary act. But we also use words just in themselves to do something directly. That was the idea that at first he called a performative and then later came to call an illocutionsary act.